Blood Meridian(33)

El jefe, said the judge.

The juggler's eyes sought out Glanton. He sat unmoved. The juggler looked at the old woman where she sat apart, facing the dark, lightly tottering, racing the night in her rags. He raised his finger to his lips and he spread his arms in a gesture of uncertainty.

El jefe, hissed the judge.

The man turned and went along the group at the fire and brought himself before Glanton and crouched and offered up the cards, spreading them in both hands. If he spoke his words were snatched away unheard. Glanton smiled, his eyes were small against the stinging grit. He put one hand forth and paused, he looked at the juggler. Then he took a card.

The juggler folded shut the deck and tucked it among his clothes. He reached for the card in Glanton's hand. Perhaps he touched it, perhaps not. The card vanished. It was in Glanton's hand and then it was not. The juggler's eyes snapped after it where it had gone down the dark. Perhaps Glanton had seen the card's face. What could it have meant to him? The juggler reached out to that naked bedlam beyond the fire's light but in the doing he overbalanced and fell forward against Glanton and created a moment of strange liaison with his old man's arms about the leader as if he would console him at his scrawny bosom.

Glanton swore and flung him away and at that moment the old woman began to chant.

Glanton rose.

She raised her jaw, gibbering at the night.

Shut her up, said Glanton.

La carroza, la carroza, cried the beldam. Invertido. Carta de guerra, de venganza. La vi sin ruedas sobre un rio obscuro...

Glanton called to her and she paused as if she'd heard him but it was not so. She seemed to catch some new drift in her divinings.

Perdida, perdida. La carta esta perdida en la noche.

The girl standing this while at the edge of the howling darkness crossed herself silently. The old malabarista was on his knees where he'd been flung. Perdida, perdida, he whispered.

Un maleficio, cried the old woman. Que viento tan maleante ...

By god you will shut up, said Glanton, drawing his revolver.

Carroza de muertos, llena de huesos. El joven que .. .

The judge like a great ponderous djinn stepped through the fire and the flames delivered him up as if he were in some way native to their element. He put his arms around Glanton. Someone snatched the old woman's blindfold from her and she and the juggler were clouted away and when the company turned in to sleep and the low fire was roaring in the blast like a thing alive these four yet crouched at the edge of the firelight among their strange chattels and watched how the ragged flames fled down the wind as if sucked by some maelstrom out there in the void, some vortex in that waste apposite to which man's transit and his reckonings alike lay abrogate. As if beyond will or fate he and his beasts and his trappings moved both in card and in substance under consignment to some third and other destiny.

In the morning when they rode out it was that pale day with the sun not risen and the wind had abated in the night and the things of the night were gone. The juggler on his burro trotted out to the head of the column and fell in with Glanton and they rode on together and they were so riding in the afternoon when the company entered the town of Janos.





An ancient walled presidio composed wholly of mud, a tall mud church and mud watchtowers and all of it rainwashed and lumpy and sloughing into a soft decay. The advent of the riders bruited by scurvid curs that howled woundedly and slank among the crumbling walls.

They rode past the church where old Spanish bells seagreen with age hung from a pole between low mud dolmens. Darkeyed children watched from the hovels. The air was heavy with the smoke from charcoal fires and a few old pelados sat mute in the doorways and many of the houses were caved and ruinous and stood for pens. An old man with soapy eyes lurched out at them and held forth his hand. Una corta caridad, he croaked to the passing horses. Por Dios.

In the square two of the Delawares and the outrider Webster were squatting in the dust with a weathered old woman the color of pipeclay. Dry old crone, half naked, her paps like wrinkled aubergines hanging from under the shawl she wore. She stared at the ground nor did she look up even when the horses stood all about her.

Glanton looked down the square. The town appeared empty. There was a small company of soldiers garrisoned here but they did not turn out. Dust was blowing through the streets. His horse leaned and sniffed at the old woman and jerked its head and trembled and Glanton patted the animal's neck and dismounted.

She was in a meatcamp about eight mile up the river, said Webster. She caint walk.

How many were there?

We reckoned maybe fifteen or twenty. They didnt have no stock to amount to anything. I dont know what she was doin there.

Glanton crossed in front of his horse, passing the reins behind his back.